Children of the Ghetto

last.

When the first delicious instants were over, Mendel drew a chair to the table and wrote a letter in Hebrew script and posted it and Beenah picked up Miriam's jacket. The crackling flames had subsided to a steady glow, the clock ticked on quietly as before, but something new and sweet and sacred had come into her life, and Beenah no longer wished to die.

When Miriam came home, she brought a little blast of cold air into the room. Beenah rose and shut the door and put out Miriam's supper; she did not drag her feet now.

'Was it a nice play, Miriam?' said Beenah softly.

'The usual stuff and nonsense!' said Miriam peevishly. 'Love and all that sort of thing, as if the world never got any older.'

At breakfast next morning old Hyams received a letter by the first post. He carefully took his spectacles off and donned his reading-glasses to read it, throwing the envelope carelessly into the fire. When he had scanned a few lines he uttered an exclamation of surprise and dropped the letter.

'What's the matter, father?' said Daniel, while Miriam tilted her snub nose curiously.

'Praised be God!' was all the old man could say.

'Well, what is it? Speak!' said Beenah, with unusual animation, while a flush of excitement lit up Miriam's face and made it beautiful.

'My brother in America has won a thousand pounds on the lotter_ee and he invites me and Beenah to come and live with him.'

'Your brother in America!' repeated his children staring.

'Why, I didn't know you had a brother in America,' added Miriam.

'No, while he was poor, I didn't mention him,' replied Mendel, with unintentional sarcasm. 'But I've heard from him several times. We both came over from Poland together, but the Board of Guardians sent him and a lot of others on to New York.'

'But you won't go, father!' said Daniel.

'Why not? I should like to see my brother before I die. We were very thick as boys.'

'But a thousand pounds isn't so very much,' Miriam could not refrain from saying.

Old Hyams had thought it boundless opulence and was now sorry he had not done his brother a better turn.

'It will be enough for us all to live upon, he and Beenah and me. You see his wife died and he has no children.'

'You don't really mean to go?' gasped Daniel, unable to grasp the situation suddenly sprung upon him. 'How will you get the money to travel with?'

'Read here!' said Mendel, quietly passing him the letter. 'He offers to send it.'

'But it's written in Hebrew!' cried Daniel, turning it upside down hopelessly.

'You can read Hebrew writing surely,' said his father.

'I could, years and years ago. I remember you taught me the letters. But my Hebrew correspondence has been so scanty-' He broke off with a laugh and handed the letter to Miriam, who surveyed it with mock comprehension. There was a look of relief in her eyes as she returned it to her father.

'He might have sent something to his nephew and his niece,' she said half seriously.

'Perhaps he will when I get to America and tell him how pretty you are,' said Mendel oracularly. He looked quite joyous and even ventured to pinch Miriam's flushed cheek roguishly, and she submitted to the indignity without a murmur.

'Why you're looking as pleased as Punch too, mother,' said Daniel, in half-rueful amazement. 'You seem delighted at the idea of leaving us.'

'I always wanted to see America,' the old woman admitted with a smile. 'I also shall renew an old friendship in New York.' She looked meaningly at her husband, and in his eye was an answering love-light.

'Well, that's cool!' Daniel burst forth. 'But she doesn't mean it, does she, father?'

'I mean it.' Hyams answered.

'But it can't be true,' persisted Daniel, in ever-growing bewilderment. 'I believe it's all a hoax.'

Mendel hastily drained his coffee-cup.

'A hoax!' he murmured, from behind the cup.

'Yes, I believe some one is having a lark with you.'

'Nonsense!' cried Mendel vehemently, as he put down his coffee-cup and picked up the letter from the table. 'Don't I know my own brother Yankov's writing. Besides, who else would know all the little things he writes about?'

Daniel was silenced, but lingered on after Miriam had departed to her wearisome duties.

'I shall write at once, accepting Yankov's offer,' said his father. 'Fortunately we took the house by the week, so you can always move out if it is too large for you and Miriam. I can trust you to look after Miriam, I know, Daniel.' Daniel expostulated yet further, but Mendel answered:

'He is so lonely. He cannot well come over here by himself because he is half paralyzed. After all, what have I to do in England? And the mother naturally does not care to leave me. Perhaps I shall get my brother to travel with me to the land of Israel, and then we shall all end our days in Jerusalem, which you know has always been my heart's desire.'

Neither mentioned Bessie Sugarman.

'Why do you make so much bother?' Miriam said to Daniel in the evening. 'It's the best thing that could have happened. Who'd have dreamed at this hour of the day of coming into possession of a relative who might actually have something to leave us. It'll be a good story to tell, too.'

After Shool next morning Mendel spoke to the President.

'Can you lend me six pounds?' he asked.

Belcovitch staggered.

'Six pounds!' he repeated, dazed.

'Yes. I wish to go to America with my wife. And I want you moreover to give your hand as a countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till I get work.'

'But six pounds is a very great sum-without sureties,' said Belcovitch, rubbing his time-worn workaday high hat in his agitation.

'I know it is!' answered Mendel, 'but God is my witness that I mean to pay you. And if I die before I can do so I vow to send word to my son Daniel, who will pay you the balance. You know my son Daniel. His word is an oath.'

'But where shall I get six pounds from?' said Bear helplessly. 'I am only a poor tailor, and my daughter gets married soon. It is a great sum. By my honorable word, it is. I have never lent so much in my life, nor even been security for such an amount.'

Mendel dropped his head. There was a moment of anxious silence. Bear thought deeply.

'I tell you what I'll do,' said Bear at last. 'I'll lend you five if you can manage to come out with that.'

Mendel gave a great sigh of relief. 'God shall bless you,' he said. He wrung the sweater's hand passionately. 'I dare say we shall find another sovereign's-worth to sell.' Mendel clinched the borrowing by standing the lender a glass of rum, and Bear felt secure against the graver shocks of doom. If the worst come to the worst now, he had still had something for his money.

And so Mendel and Beenah sailed away over the Atlantic. Daniel accompanied them to Liverpool, but Miriam said she could not get a day's holiday-perhaps she remembered the rebuke Esther Ansell had drawn down on herself, and was chary of asking.

At the dock in the chill dawn, Mendel Hyams kissed his son Daniel on the forehead and said in a broken voice:

'Good-bye. God bless you.' He dared not add and God bless your Bessie, my daughter-in-law to be; but the benediction was in his heart.

Daniel turned away heavy-hearted, but the old man touched him on the shoulder and said in a low tremulous voice: